


The Stark Queen's Golden Hand

by sbarmarj



Series: The Lion's Pride [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Brienne's the Best, Gen, Women Being Awesome, or at least I am pretty sure it passes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:52:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbarmarj/pseuds/sbarmarj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your father asked me to come.”</p>
<p>As if that actually answered the young woman’s question, but it is the only answer Brienne of Tarth has to give her. </p>
<p>Myrcella and Brienne discuss life now that the war is over and her true parentage is known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stark Queen's Golden Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nawailohi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nawailohi/gifts).



> So this started in response to Nawailohi's prompt "Brienne teaches Myrcella to protect herself... and hold her head high, despite her scars." However, there really aren't any weapons mentioned and Myrcella seems to have everything under control. Sometimes a character runs away with story, and she totally did in this case.
> 
> Un-beta'd, and I am suppose to be studying for the bar right now, so my brain is, like, super-fried. Any mistakes, etc are all mine. 
> 
> Obviously, given that I am a lawyer, I understand all about copyright and clearly own nothing.

“Your father asked me to come.”

As if that actually answered the young woman’s question, but it is the only answer Brienne of Tarth has to give her. 

“My father is dead.”

“One of them is, the other…” 

Brienne is no better at the game of thrones now, and no more gifted at wielding words, than she was when the war started. 

Of course, the girl figured this out as soon as Brienne appeared in Dorne, road weary, travel worn and totally flummoxed by Dornish manners. Unlike the knight, she has been a pawn too long to remain ignorant of the game. 

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” 

“That he is alive?” Somewhere in the last exchange of words, Brienne missed an attack, and it shows with her question.

“That he is my father. Its no better to be the Kingslayer’s bastard, than the slain king’s daughter.”

Brienne had seen the dead queen a handful of times, in total a mere few hours, and even she was startled by the young princess’s resemblance to her mother. The scar is the only thing that reminds her Cersei has not come back to haunt them. 

She might look like the queen, but her father is there too. The self-mockery, tilted head, and too honest summation of the situation makes Brienne think of the man she left, guarding a new queen with newly recovered honor. 

“Why did you come?” And they are back at the original question. Brienne is tempted to meet this feint attack with the same block as before, just to see how the young lioness responds when pushed in battle. 

“My honor demanded it.”

Even with the weight of Oathkeeper on her hip, and her own scars to remind her, she is still too fast to swear an oath with little thought to the pain of honoring it. 

“You honor an oath to a man who cannot honor his own?” 

“Yes.” 

The other woman pauses, but instead of responding she gracefully turns to pour tea. 

Brienne is sure she won this round, though she is not sure why the truth caused the princess to retreat. Battles like this make her miss Jaime, though Tyrion would be the better ally at the moment.

“Does it bother you to be the Kingslayer’s Whore?” Anyone watching would think the princess was asking about the weather her manner was so polite. 

“No more than it bothers me to be called Brienne the Beauty. Neither is true.” Brienne wonders which bothers the princess more—being the Kingslayer’s daughter or being scarred. Brienne is sure neither sits well with her. 

The conversation lulls again. Did Jaime think they would bond over their mutual scars? She does not know what to say to his daughter.

“What did you expect to find here?”

The shift in attack is clever, and Brienne appreciates that the lioness is testing a different front. 

“I don’t know.” She wasn’t expecting to find a woman who wears her scar with pride, who has found love, and who effectively plays the game her mother lost. 

Maybe she was expecting to find a powerless girl robbed of her beauty, her marriage, and her name. 

“When I came here I didn’t know what to expect either. I just knew it wasn’t home.”

Brienne wonders what it was like to know your whole life you will be sold off in marriage to some faraway lord. In all her travels, she has always known she would go back to Tarth and her husband would come with her. 

“Is it home now?” 

“Yes.”

Brienne has been here for three days and she knows it is true. She is not sure how this lioness landed on her feet, but land she did.

“Your father once told me the Seven blessed me when they cursed me to be an ugly woman, otherwise I would have been chained by duty.”

“He’s not very romantic, is he?” Myrcella says it in jest, but means it in truth.

Brienne’s laugh startles the younger woman who looks surprised her insult seems to have missed both its targets. 

“You really don’t know your father, do you?” The moment Brienne says it she sobers because its true and no amount of Jaime’s wishing will change it. “But you do understand what he meant.”

So far Brienne has learned that Myrcella’s scar proved only that Trystane loves her for more than her beauty. The Dornes may have annulled her marriage, but they opened their coffers and gave her the dowry she came with, and then gifted her with the brideprice when the Dragon Queen returned it. They made her a very rich, ruined woman, who does as she pleases. 

“I would never be allowed this if I stayed in King’s Landing.” Brienne knows Myrcella means that she would not have been happy, or particularly safe, even now. Myrcella lived in her mother’s shadow for long enough to know the game of thrones is cruelest to the queens.

“No, King’s Landing is not kind to its women.” Cersei, Elia, Rhaella, and Sansa all bore witness in different ways to its harshness. Not for the first time, Brienne worries about Daenerys. 

“Is that why he chose the North?” Myrcella sounds truly curious. Brienne hears the other part of the question—did he chose the north for her, a giant of woman, who was ugly before war scarred her face?

A Lannister serving a Stark Queen.

In his glibber moments, Jaime very much enjoyed telling her it made perfect sense since its cold enough in Winterfell for hell to freeze over anyway. In more private moments, he told her it was only because she believed him to be a man good enough to stand behind a queen. To the many people who were aghast at the choice, Sansa simply said he served better with one hand than most people with two. So far it has worked out. He sets the northern lords off balance, Sansa pushes them into place, and Brienne guards their backs.

“I think he chose it because Sansa asked him to.” Neither of them likes it in the North or their current duties, but they won’t leave Sansa until they are sure she is secure in her throne, and Westeros at peace. 

Brienne only notices Myrcella's ever so slight reaction to her calling the Queen by her given name because she looks like Jaime in that moment. It wasn’t a slip of tongue on Brienne’s part; Sansa insists Brienne and Jaime treat her like they did during the war. 

“If she wanted a Lannister she could have asked my other uncle, her husband, to serve. One hand for each queen.”

Tyrion warned her that his niece was too clever by half. Only a long winter spent with a Lannister, and too many council sessions with Sansa, alerts Brienne to the fact that Myrcella is subtly probing. Of course Dorne would want to know how strong the friendship between the North and the Iron Throne. 

Jaime would tell his daughter Sansa likes her husband’s hands right where they are.

“Sansa and Daenerys seem to be happy with the current arrangement, and you know the Queen of the North has no Hand.” 

“And yet they call him the Stark Queen’s Golden Hand.”

“Its possibly the only name your father despises more than Kingslayer.” 

Unlike Brienne’s names, Jaime’s are true, even if Jaime likes to deny Sansa’s trust in him. But, Brienne is sure it’s that trust that makes him wonder what his relationship with his daughter could have been. She also knows Sansa’s struggles make him think of Myrcella’s challenges and her lack of allies. It’s why she came when he asked her to, and it’s why she promised she would make sure Myrcella was happy before she returned. 

“I don’t know what to call him, or you for that matter. I had a father and a mother.” 

Brienne knows she mourned a father and a mother, a brother, a homeland, a marriage, and a name. It’s a great many things to mourn before your sixteenth birthday.

“You can call us Jaime and Brienne.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think that my Brienne is particularly in character, but I keep thinking after a while with Jaime she would really blossom into a confidant badass. She gives him honor, he give's her some of the lions' pride.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
